Saundra Schuster quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education

In Sex-Harassment Cases, No One is Happy With Colleges' Response

"This was the dawn of a new awakening," says Saundra K. Schuster, a lawyer for the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, which consults with colleges on sexual-misconduct investigations.

While most of the attention on campuses related to Title IX centers on problems between students, the letter also put colleges on notice that they must fairly handle students’ complaints against professors. Institutions must respond to those in a uniform way, says Ms. Schuster, one that attempts to support students who complain, stop any misbehavior, and prevent it from recurring.

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LA Times quotes Sokolow

College Administrators Learning to be Sexual Misconduct Detectives

Many colleges are moving to hire and train specialists to handle the cases. Some universities have added as many as three full-time staff members to focus on the issue. To keep up, the Assn. of Title IX Administrators has increased the number of administrators it is training annually from 300 to 1,500 in the last three years, said Brett Sokolow, the group's executive director.

Before 2011, he said, the job of Title IX coordinator was "just a title" and the vast majority of those who held it were unaware of their responsibilities. Now, he said, it's a full-time position that oversees campus policies on sexual misconduct and the process to review every complaint.

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Fighting Sexual Assault

Click here to read an article from the Austin Chronicle.

Overreaching on Campus Rape

The last line of this article gets it totally wrong. But the rest is thought-provoking. We can't consign campus victims to the criminal justice process as their sole remedy because that that would leave them with no remedy at all.

The Right to be Forgotten: Young Readers & Title IX

This takes a minute to load, but is a nice interview. Wait for it to load, then click the Title IX tab at the bottom.

Comment from Brett Sokolow on Inside Higher Ed article

Sexual Assault Vigilantes

Comment from Brett Sokolow: “One of the things I told the reporter that did not make it into the article is that some colleges, in the name of upholding Title IX, are placing gag orders on students that prohibit them from talking about an investigation, hearing process, or their own stories. That’s simply a misreading of Title IX by the college. Title IX mandates that colleges conduct confidential investigations, but that mandate imposes the confidentiality on the college, not the participants. It’s smart for administrators to caution students as to what can happen in terms of their own privacy if they do speak out, but improper to tell them not to do so.”

From the article: Brett Sokolow, president of the NCHERM Group, a law firm that handles campus sexual assault cases for students and colleges, said colleges have become too prone to pressuring students to enter into confidentiality agreements between the two sides, even though doing so is a violation of Title IX. But, he said, if the rape accusation listed on the bathroom walls includes students found not guilty by Columbia, the writer is “vulnerable” to defamation.

“This is one of those tough cases where there’s a difference between what a victim knows happens to them and what a college can prove,” he said. “There’s dissatisfaction where there may have been an assault, but evidence isn’t there so the victim feels like the college hasn’t sided with them.”

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Fox Sports quotes Brett Sokolow

'Doing nothing is always the wrong response' to sexual assault allegations

But Brett Sokolow, executive director of the Association of Title IX Administrators, said that across the country, colleges and universities have been left scrambling to figure out how to comply with a complex law and evolving guidelines.

“I think a lot of what we’re seeing today is the consequence of the rush to do something rather than do it correctly,” Sokolow said.

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